The guiding idea it is the central idea that organizes all the others in a coherent discourse. It is a filter through which we interpret all our beliefs, experiences and mental content; and therefore profoundly modifies the way we see the world.
The guiding idea is also responsible for giving a direction to our thinking. Without it, our mind is unfocused, without a concrete objective; But when we have a clear guiding idea, our brain puts its full attention on it. Thus, we can use all our resources to think about the content of it..
When the guiding idea is false, our thinking suffers from a series of errors, also known as cognitive biases. In this article we will see some of the most important of them.
Next we will study several of the most common thinking errors, produced due to a failure in the guiding ideas..
These are reasoning problems that we all often experience; therefore, becoming more aware of them will help us to be more effective in our way of thinking..
The fundamental attribution error is to explain what happens to each person based on different factors. When something bad happens to ourselves, we blame it on external factors. Instead, when another person suffers a negative consequence or has a problem, we tend to blame their innate traits..
For example, if we have a car accident, we will think that it happened because the road was in bad condition, because we were distracted or because the car did not respond well..
However, if it is someone else who has a similar problem, we will blame it on being clumsy driving, or useless.
It is important to emphasize that this judgment is made without having a real knowledge of what are the causes of what happened. The guiding idea here is that we are never to blame, while others are always directly responsible for what happens to them..
When it appears, this pattern of thought leads us to ignore all the information that may be contrary to our ideas; At the same time, it causes us to give greater credibility to those data that prove us right. In this way, we filter reality based on what we previously thought..
In this case, the guiding idea is that we are right and therefore cannot be wrong. However, this bias usually leads us to make much more serious errors than we would have had if we had seen the data as it really was..
For example, a racist person may be convinced that all members of a certain ethnic group are lazy.
If this idea is very strong, you will only look at the cases in which a fact supports your belief; but he will ignore all people of that race who work hard and try hard, even if he sees them directly.
This way of thinking leads us to interpret the past as if what happened could have been predicted in advance. In this case, we do not realize that whenever we look back, it is much easier to see the connections between the different elements of a situation..
For example, after a divorce, a person could look back at previous years and see all kinds of clues as to what was going to happen..
However, these clues would not have been apparent while the situation was unfolding; but the individual would believe that he had simply been unable to see something that at present seems obvious to him.
The guiding idea in this case is that we always have to be able to accurately predict the future. Of course, this belief usually brings us all kinds of frustrations, since it is not possible to know perfectly what is going to happen.
This erroneous pattern of thinking leads us to give much more importance to our successes than to our failures. When something goes well for us, we attribute it to internal factors (our intelligence, our talent ...).
On the other hand, when a situation is not favorable to us, we tend to justify ourselves by saying that what happened is due to something external to us. For example, the action of other people, society, culture, the economy ...
One of the clearest examples of this is what happens when a student takes a test. If you pass, you tend to say that it is because you have studied hard and tried hard. On the other hand, if he fails, he will blame the difficulty of the test or that his teacher has a mania for him.
The guiding idea in the self-service bias is that we can't fail, and that when we try hard, everything works out for us. This is a way to protect our ego, but in the long term it brings us more complications than benefits..
This thinking error leads us to believe that our opinions are shared by the majority of the population. The problem comes because, in most cases, we don't really have data that this is true. However, as we hold a belief, we think that others should too.
The guiding idea in this bias is that other people have to think like us. Of course, this bias tends to be more dangerous when our opinions are not very popular or are not based on reality; In these cases, we use this way of thinking to justify ourselves and not have to revise our beliefs.
The guiding ideas of our thinking can lead us to make many mistakes; especially when we are not aware of them. In this list we have seen some of the most common failures that occur due to them, but of course there are many more.
Therefore, to learn to reason properly, it is necessary that we constantly examine what we think and modify our beliefs according to reality..
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